My First Visitor!

This past week I had my first visitor! Mom came to visit for the week and we had a great time exploring the country. We started the week off with a couple days in Oslo, where I met her at the airport. During our two days there, we checked off a ton of museums on the list, including the Norwegian Technology Museum, a quick trip up to Holmenkolen Ski Jump, the Folk Museum, Viking Ship Museum, Kon-Tiki Museum, the Fram Museum, and the Norwegian Resistance Museum. We also managed a few good walks through parks, by the Royal Palace, and some of the busier shopping districts. The Radison Blu, where we spent our nights, also gave us a great taste of a true Norwegian breakfast, complete with various gormet cheeses, salmon, herring, coldcuts, fruits, veggies, sausages, breads, crackers, pastes, etc. etc. etc!! Very tasty! And, it cut the need for any big meals the rest of the day! Our first evening on Oslo though, we did manage to get out for what I considered a GREAT meal -- I'd been craving a juicy, American-style burger and fries, so we hit up TGI Fridays -- mmm! After our stay in Oslo, we took the train on to Lillehammar - site of the 1994 Winter Olympics! So our first stop in Lillehammar was up to the ski jump where the opening ceremonies were held and a quick look around the Norwegian Olympic Museum which provided a nice history of all of the Olympic games. Our second day in Lillehammar took us to the Maihaugen Museum, which had an excellent open-air museum with tens of old buildings and houses from yester-year Norway. A perfect day outside for exploring this site!

Next it was on to Trondheim for the rest of the week. After over two months here, I finally managed to set foot in Nidaros catherdral! Another major event of the week was taking the free bus to IKEA for an exquisite dinner of meatballs and a night of shopping -- Ahh.... the simple pleasures :-)

Our last adventure was a day trip to the town of Roros - a little old mining town about two hours from Trondheim. Here we saw our first Norwegian SNOW!!! Ski season is on the way! Roros already had about 4 inches of snow, which made the town even more picturesque. Along with wandering the snowy streets, we toured the Roros museum, which provided a nice history of the town's mining history. A great end to an excellent week!

Berries!

One of my favorite past times during my first weeks in Norway has been berry picking. Not only did I get the opportunity to go out and explore a new patch of woods, but I was able to come back with a tasty treat after words! Berry picking seems to be a popular activity among most Norwegians. People are all over the forest with their berry buckets and Norwegian kids run around with berry juice dripping from their face and fingers. And, I soon found out how Norwegians can be so efficient with their berry picking... long gone are the days of bending over and picking one single berry at a time when you use berry pickers! These revolutionary devices save hours of time and back pain! I'm thinking I might start a new business once I get back to the States...

I got in on prime berry season for raspberries, blueberries, lignonberries, and red currants. Below are pictures of some of the berries (and products!)

Lingonberries

Red Currants

My supervisors, Torbjørn and Lisa, have tons of red currant bushes in their yard and invited me over to pick some -- so I ended up with a few pail-fulls of currants! So I found myself making all sorts of new and exciting red currant products -- red currant cake (pictured below), red currant muffins, and red currant jam -- which I will probably be eating for the rest of the year!